


Nicotine

by reindeersidecar



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, They're both just really messy as people on our plane of existence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 11:45:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8978338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reindeersidecar/pseuds/reindeersidecar
Summary: Your love's a fucking drag, but I need it so bad.





	

Angela wakes to the click of the lighter.

She rubs the heel of her palm into her heavy eyes. “Ana, bärli—“ She turns over onto her shoulder to squint at the woman. She took to calling her that after she—rather snidely—called her so under her breath, mocking the captain’s on-field moniker “Mama Bear.” She had never heard Ana laugh as loudly as she did accidentally overhearing that. Without context, it’s too sweet, too much affection for their very casual affair to warrant, and that does not bother Angela, but she fears it might Ana.

Ana’s dark eyes slide over with a smirking, brazen, “what are you going to do about it?” look, as the cigarette hangs out of her full lips. Her handsome face and the cup of her hands are lit by the tiny flame of the lighter in the early morning darkness of Angela’s quarters.

She takes a long drag of her cigarette, much to Angela’s disdain. Angela hates smoking. Especially in bed. Especially in her own room. She’s told Ana as much.

She has half the mind to leave, but this is _her_ room, and something about the way Ana lounges lazily with her back against the headboard—blanket gathered around her wide, naked hips, baring her chest to the cool morning, hair spilling like black satin down her shoulders—keeps her there. Her sharp eyes watch Angela with casual interest, a kind of innate lust about her.

Angela shakes her head, as if to break a trance. She won’t be seduced so easily.

“If you’re so hell-bent on killing yourself, don’t involve me,” Angela grumbles, sliding out of bed.

 

***

 

The first time she and Ana shared more than idle conversation or a greeting in the hallway, it was more than six years after she’d been recruited. Of course, she’d spent much of that time commuting back and forth from headquarters to university, obtaining a proper medical degree on the organization’s dime. There really _hadn’t_ been that many opportunities to know Captain Amari as anything more than a general acquaintance, especially a woman as unreadable, as untouchable, as Ana was—is. Jesse McCree was another story, a much more open book.

Jesse fired a bullet into the practice dummy. A bullseye. “Look, Ang, I’m just saying, if you’re gonna be out in the field, might be useful to know how to fire a gun.”

Angela wiped the grease from her Caduceus staff. After some last minute tinkering in Torbjorn’s workshop, it was finally done. “Jesse, I’m not killing anyone.”  
The Peacekeeper went off once more. “ _I_ know that, but not all the bad guys are gonna get the memo, Doc,” he said. “You know I always got your six, but I just want you to be able to protect yourself. Just in case.”

“Jesse—”

“He’s right, Dr. Ziegler.” Angela and Jesse turned to the stern voice, finding one Captain Amari, wearing her fatigues, blue beret balanced upon her head of black hair. “And I don’t say that very often.”

“Aw, shucks, Mama Bear,” Jesse chuckled good-humoredly. He spun his revolver and held it out to Angela. “What do you say, Ang? I’ll teach ya myself.” He glanced over at Ana, grinning. “I learned from the best, after all.”

 “And the best will teach her, too,” Ana said. “Can’t have you confusing her with your parlor tricks, Jesse. She needs to be taught right. Some people aren’t expendable.”

“And _I’m_ expendable?” Jesse asked, a hand to his chest in feigned offense.

Ana smirked at him. “Get going, cowboy. Class is in session, and you’re a distraction.”

Jesse chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.” He holstered the Peacekeeper, tipped his hat, and strode out the door with a cheeky wink in Angela’s direction.

Angela held her hands up in front of her. “I’m flattered, Captain, really, that you would spare the time to teach me, but that doesn’t change how I feel.”  
“I don’t care how you feel, Dr. Ziegler,” Ana answered curtly. “The sooner you realize that, the easier this will be.” She drew her pistol from the holster at her hip. “No, this isn’t a choice. This is a necessity. You want to be in the field? You have to know how to fire a gun.”

Angela stared at the gun Ana held out to her. The woman seemed tremendous, powerful, in ways Angela could not conceive. She felt impossibly tall—although she was not much taller than Angela herself. She was beautiful in ways Angela never noticed a woman could be beautiful, and it was perhaps more telling of herself than of Ana that she should notice these things. Things such as the way her jaw muscle tensed, or the broadness of her shoulders, or the sheen of her hair. The laugh lines around her mouth, which betrayed her hard demeanor. Ana had a big heart, but a bigger laugh.

And Angela liked that about her.

She liked also the feel of Ana’s long arms around her, warm, calloused hands adjusting her grip on the pistol, the timbre of her husky voice in her ear.

She liked it all a bit too much.

 

***

 

Ana smelled like gunpowder and sweat and cigarette smoke. It was unlike the sterile scent of bleach that seemed to cling to Angela’s very existence.

She learned Ana’s scent whilst they sparred, the captain teaching her the intricacies of close quarters combat. With time, she also learned what Ana Amari’s hips felt like pressing against the inside of her thighs.

Ana tapped her on the shoulder. Angela let up on the pressure she was applying to her throat and supported herself there above her. Ana gasped for a breath and coughed a laugh. “Very good, Angela.”

Angela mumbled her thank you, suddenly swept up in her proximity to Ana, close enough that she could almost touch her lips, her scent thick in her lungs. Ana’s dark eyes flickered from her eyes to her mouth then back to her eyes again. “Doctor,” she began in a low, rasping voice, “I suggest you get up, or our sparring will begin to look like something else.”

Angela sat up then on her haunches and glanced about the gym. They weren’t exactly alone, Gabe and Jack sparring on the far side, Reinhardt lifting weights behind them.

Ana scooted herself out from beneath her and stood to towel off. Angela tried not to dwell too much on how the sweat had gathered between the muscles of Ana’s back. The sports bra didn’t help much.

She saw Jesse in the windows of the gym’s double doors. He waved a pack of cigarettes in the air. Handling a gun wasn’t the only thing Ana had taught him. Ana pulls out her lighter from her duffel, no doubt to join him.

Angela stood there wringing the hem of her tanktop between her hands. “Smoking is terrible for you, you know.”

Ana looked at her a moment, one bold brow quirked. “Well, that’s the thing about addictions, Dr. Ziegler,” she told her. “They’re terrible for you, even if they make you feel good.”  


 

* * *

 

Even though Angela knew how to use a gun, she never loaded it.

Yes, she walked around with an empty pistol on missions. She’d never even gotten close to having to use it, and Jesse always had her six, as promised.

Except the one time he didn’t.

To no fault of his own, really, because he’d been jumped, too, and shot twice in the leg. Once in the thigh, once in the foot. He fell to the wooden floor of the old Route 66 shack like a ton of bricks.

Angela directed her staff at him, urging him to get up, to fight, as the thug crept towards her, silhouetted by the afternoon sunlight. She scrambled to grab the Peacekeeper, but the thug’s steel-toed boot kicked it aside. Angela pulled free her own pistol.

It was empty, of course. But he didn’t know that.

He stared down the barrel of her gun. “You’re not going to shoot me,” he said with a sly grin. “You’re scared.”

And she was. But that was not the reason she wouldn’t shoot him.

Angela realized her arms were trembling. She locked her elbows. He continued his advance on her and raised his own gun to her face.

With a loud clap, a bullet lodged itself in the back of his skull, and he fell forward onto her. She frantically pushed herself out from under his dead weight and glanced up, expecting to see Jesse, but instead she saw Ana, peering down into the scope of her sniper, a good twenty feet from the door of the shack. She lowered her gun then, slung it by its strap over her shoulder and stalked toward Angela.

She held her hand out. “Give me your gun, Dr. Ziegler.”

“Captain—“

“Give it to me,” she repeated through her teeth.

Angela placed her pistol in Ana’s outstretched hand. Ana shut her eyes as soon as she weighed the gun her grasp. She could tell it was empty without even looking.

“Captain Amari…”

“Do you have any idea—“ Ana threw the gun against the wall and turned away to look at Jesse. “—yenaal deen _ommak_ —“ she hissed under her breath, and Angela could insinuate enough from the woman’s tone that she wasn’t saying something pleasant. She turned to Angela again, fire in her eyes. Her face was red, and Angela knew she was on the verge of exploding. “I’m benching you.” She turned away then and walked to Jesse.

“What?” Angela sputtered. “No, you can’t—“

Ana cut her off with a single sharp look over her shoulder. “I can. I’m your superior, Angela, but I’m beginning to think you don’t know what that means. It means,” She inhaled sharply, crouching to inspect Jesse’s wounds. “You follow my orders. All of them. So when I say you will use a gun—“ she glares at Angela, “you _will_ use a gun.”

Angela stared down at her feet, unable to hold the woman’s hard, penetrating gaze any longer. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Now, help me get Jesse to the drop ship.” She swore under her breath, shrugging Jesse’s weight onto her shoulder. “I need a smoke.”

 

***

 

The worst part of not being out in the field was—shockingly—not the paperwork.

It was the waiting.

She monitored the team’s vitals from the med bay. It didn’t help her to do so. Only made her more anxious. But she had to do _something_.

She hadn’t realized she’d fallen asleep at her desk until Athena woke her with a loud, jarring buzzer. “Dr. Ziegler,” came the AI voice overhead, “I have lost a reading on the squad.”

Angela sat up fast and stared at the large screen. It had gone red, everyone’s vitals reading as, well—dead. “Are they—“

“No,” the AI cut in, “I am sure they are alright, Doctor.”

“But you’re not _certain_ ,” Angela said quickly. She stood and dragged her fingers through her hair as she paced nervously. “Athena, can you patch in Captain Amari’s comm?”

“I will try.” Then, after the longest seconds of Angela’s life, “I am afraid I cannot reach Captain Amari, or any of her squad’s comms.”

Angela’s eyes stung, and she shut them. “Compose yourself, Angela,” she whispered to herself. Her heart was in her throat, blood crashing in her ears. She wanted to throw up.

She didn’t sleep.

She stayed up well into the early morning. More waiting. Waiting, just waiting, for Jesse to stumble in through her med bay doors, all banged up the way he usually was from rolling around on the ground too much. She held her breath for Ana to come in and brush off her concerns with that cold, distant way about her.

The doors swished open.

It was dark in the med bay, save the red glow of the large screen. Angela strained her eyes to make out the figure.

“Ana,” she whispered. She stumbled toward the woman and held her by the shoulders. She looked her up and down, panicked, “Are you—is anything—“

“I’m fine, Doctor,” Ana said, her voice hoarse. She sighed and took off her beret, setting it down on the desk beside them. “Sombra set off an EMP that fried our comms.” She glanced over Angela’s shoulder at the screen. “And all of our vitals monitors. Everyone is fine, however. I’m sorry to have kept you up worrying. I…”

Angela held Ana’s face between her hands, quieting the older woman, stroking the tattoo beneath her eye with a thumb.

“Angela—“

Angela pressed her mouth roughly against Ana’s. Ana made a soft noise in the back of her throat. Then Angela felt the captain’s hands clutch the small of her back. She explored the inside of her mouth, tasting the nicotine of her last smoke. When they broke apart, they were gasping.

“What do you want from me?” Ana murmured, and Angela saw something strange—vulnerable—in Ana’s eyes. She dismissed it as a trick of the light, or the dark, as it were.

“Nothing,” Angela whispered. And everything, all at once.

 

***

 

“If you’re so hell-bent on killing yourself, don’t involve me,” Angela mutters as she steps out of bed. Ana takes another long drag from her cigarette, watching the sashay of Angela’s bare backside as she crosses the room. She misses the sight when the doctor shrugs on her white, satin robe.

She can’t explain to Angela that she smokes because staying _here_ makes her so stressed. She used to leave after they had sex, before the sweat even cooled on her body. Sleepovers are a recent development.

In their relationship. In Ana’s life in general.

Waking up next to Angela makes it seem too real, and she both loves and hates that. It isn’t _supposed_ to be real, nothing more than a good fuck after a long day of work. That’s all she’s good for, anyway, she thinks to herself. She has nothing to offer the doctor beyond that. A serious relationship? She’s twenty-three years her senior. A family? She already has one. She scoffs at the idea of it.  
Angela is a pretty, young, blonde doctor with the whole world for the taking. Why would she want _her_ , an old, lonely hag, when she could have any of the strapping new recruits that come her way?

“Can I make you some coffee, bärli?”Angela calls out sweetly from across the room.

“Low samahti, habibti,” Ana sighs and she rubs her cigarette out into the ash tray on the nightstand.

She used to be beautiful like Angela, she thinks, deserving of anyone’s attention and affection. But beauty is fleeting, and she knows that, has known that, but she wonders if Angela knows that, too. She wonders when Angela will realize the horrible mistake she’s made, when she’ll stare into another woman’s face—her own face, even—and ponder how different Ana looks. Will she find the differences disgusting?

Ana lights another cigarette.

 

***

 

Angela isn’t _good_ at casual.

That’s not to say she’s good at being intimate, because she’s not, but she isn’t good at relationships in general. It’s been a year, though, with Ana, and she still doesn’t know how to tread water.

And perhaps it’s because she’s never done anything like this, had anything like this, that she wishes it were more.

But she knows Ana doesn’t want that. She told her so at the very beginning, laying down rules for their relationship as if writing up some kind of verbal contract. “I don’t care how you feel,” Ana told her. And Angela signed beside the x on line, so sure of herself. So sure she could be numb.

She thinks a lot about the different procedures she could use to numb herself. Emotional anesthetics. She entertains the idea of cutting her heart out with a scalpel.

She’ll scare Ana away with her feelings, she knows this. Has known this. Ana will think her childish, reckless with her emotions. Angela couldn’t have her thinking that after everything she’s done to prove herself otherwise.

Put me under, she begs to some higher power, just put me under.

 

***

 

They couldn’t go on, not the way they were. It was never a relationship meant to last.

At least, Angela tells herself that. It doesn’t make her feel better, but she repeats it enough times that she thinks it might eventually.

She sits curled up in her bed, looking at the impression Ana’s body left in the sheets beside her.

She considers the box of cigarettes on the nightstand and the lighter beside it. She pulls one out and smokes it.


End file.
